Blog-based Sites vs. Traditional Sites

So you want a website for your business. Why should you use a blogging tool rather than a page-based content management tool?

Blog-based sites have a number of advantages over a traditional static site or a site driven by page-based content management systems.

Blog-based Sites:

Build Credibility: Research shows that business build credibility on web by showing that there is a real company and real people behind website.

Blogs make it easier to be more personable. No, there's no "be personable" button or checkbox in a blogging interface that would force you to abandon third-person corporate speak, come out from behind curtain, and be personable on your web site. Many businesses are simply using blogging tools to power their press or news room area on a traditional website, taking advantage of blogs low costs, highly usable interface, RSS feeds, built-in archiving, etc.

But blogging does encourage a first-person, more "business-casual" style than a traditional website, mostly due to bloggings roots as a personal online journal. The Cluetrain Manifesto's main point was that with advent of Internet, markets are now conversations. Blogs are perfect tools for allowing and encouraging businesses to be part of that conversation.

Businesses that use blogs to reveal themselves as real people with names, faces, opinions, interests -- and yes, some flaws -- will ultimately be more successful online that those who choose to remain faceless, nameless, and third-person.

Are Able to Handle Smaller Chunks of Content: This is a tough one to get your head around. Typically we think of websites as a collection of "pages", linked together by a navigation bar. Many CMS systems support this paradigm - you log in, find your "page" and edit content that exists on that page. Pages become "unit of measure" for a site - if someone asked you how big your site is, you'd answer with number of pages it contains.

The unit of measure for blog content is a "post". Each new entry is a post, and usually contains (at minimum) a title and a body. Sometimes there is also an "extended entry", which is used when you see a "Read More" link.

Typically home page for a blog is a collection of most recent posts. Each post might also have it's own unique page - otherwise known as a permalink. Posts often get assigned to a category, and a category might have it's own "page" that contains links to all posts in that category.

But a post might also be a product in an online catalog, a single link in a list of favorite sites, one event in a historical timeline, or contain an image that gets randomized in site header. A single web "page" may contain posts or lists of posts from one or multiple weblogs. Sidebar content chunks may come from a seperate weblog than main site content. One post might contain your site copyright date that gets used on every page in site.

By breaking traditional "page model" of websites, blogging tools offer capability of serving up a variety of content types, entered and maintained through a single interface. Adding a product to online catalog can use same interface and process as a new image header or a new chunk of content.

Is PayDotCom a good alternative to ClickBank?

Written by Mark Tse

PayDotCom is a new payment portal for small business owner. The best advantage of using PayDotCom is it has a built-in affiliate network, so every new merchants can get an army of affiliates fast just as what ClickBank is providing.

There is a main difference between PayDotCom and ClickBank. PayDotCom provides larger flexibility to merchants than ClickBank does. For example, ClickBank refunds products immediately after customer request and never ask opinions from merchants. On other hand, PayDotCom will let merchants decide what to do from refund request.

Is PayDotCom better than ClickBank? The answer is YES in almost all areas except one thing. ClickBank has hundreds of thousands of members while PayDotCom is very new.